This is the last Woody Woodpecker short produced by Walter Lantz -- he shut down the studio after discovering that it would take ten years for the 1972 slate of cartoons to turn a profit and threw in the towel.. Fifty-nine years in the industry -- his first recorded credit is from the 1913 Bray cartoon COLONEL HEEZA LIAR IN Africa: fifty-four as a producer and forty-two as his own boss. So he retired to paint for another twenty-two years. Good for him.
It was time, and not just on financial grounds. This cartoon about how Woody and his dog deal with a mean teacher is okay, but the drawings are reduced to colored-in lines and the animation is just a step above TV animation at this stage: everything moves appropriately, but anything that doesn't absolutely have to move doesn't. It's a great fall from Lantz' glory days of the 1940s and the great Woody Woodpeckers directed by Seamus Culhane. Time to move on.
It was time, and not just on financial grounds. This cartoon about how Woody and his dog deal with a mean teacher is okay, but the drawings are reduced to colored-in lines and the animation is just a step above TV animation at this stage: everything moves appropriately, but anything that doesn't absolutely have to move doesn't. It's a great fall from Lantz' glory days of the 1940s and the great Woody Woodpeckers directed by Seamus Culhane. Time to move on.